


Best Served Cold

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Business, Daddy Kink, Gen, Jeunesse dore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4870224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In A World ... in which the lads are heir to fortunes, some things never change. And the idiocy of certain firms and hacks is constant.</p><p>But, not to come over all Clavell on it, revenge is a dish best served cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Served Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Flap, butterfly! Flap your wings! 
> 
> Or, 'You can take the lads out of their circumstances, but ... character always shines through'.... Even in commerce; even amongst merchant princes.
> 
> Every so often, one can either take a trope out and shoot it to put it out of its misery, or give it back its character and self-respect. I chose the second option here. (Poor, abused, Americanised, un-Brit-picked trope: there, there, have a biscuit and a nice cuppa and a bit of a lie-down, it'll be better, we can sort this, hush, now....)

* * *

 

Sir Geoffrey was given to saying – particularly to his children, as a salutary reminder – that had it not been for press-ganging, imperialism, and opium, they’d be all of them living on an estate – and he didn’t mean Bishopsbury Park – and working down the factory, the brewery, and the shops.

To this his wife – who’d have been Lady Payne by marriage had she not already been Lady Karen in right of her being the daughter of the sixth Lord Wednesfield (called as ‘Wencefield’ in the same fashion as that in which the residents traditionally pronounce the name of the village) – tended to respond with a motherly smile and a discreet silence. She was a motherly sort of body in any case, who (rather like her daughters) managed despite an aristocratic background to look like a cross between a cheerful games mistress at Cheltenham Ladies’ or Roedean, and a sort of superior charwoman.

It was unwise, all the same, to dismiss her as merely the sort of woman who had traded veg. with Lady Strange, tips on the raising of poultry with the late Debo Devonshire, and opinions on Gloucestershire Old Spots Pigs with HRH the Princess Royal.

An extraordinary number of people had been misled, often to their own deserved destruction, by thinking her simply an instance of thick-ankles-and-thick-minds, a Jolly Old Girl who’d turned to baking biscuits and running parish jumbles after leaving school and the hockey fields of her youth. If Lady Karen had ever in her life thought or said, ‘Jolly hockey sticks’, it should have been whilst beating – with a motherly smile – some fool over the head with one, for having displeased her daughters, her husband, or, especially, her son.

Sir Geoffrey Payne, fifth Baronet (of Bushbury), rather prided himself on his wife, son, and daughters; but he had no qualms in priding himself also on reminding them how very differently their lives might have turned out, or what the history of the family fortunes required of them all in recompense for how these had been made: both by the Payne baronets ‘of Bushbury’ and by their long-allied family the earls of Wednesfield, whose family name was Harris. There was a rent to be paid for living, felt he, and amends to be made.

For the foundations of the Payne and Wednesfield fortunes had, after all, been put down East of Suez, in the days of John Company before the Mutiny and the institution of direct rule, and had involved derring-do in an often dubious cause: a derring-do which – however exciting – had been laced in its early days with opium and which upon occasion varied piracy with a little burglary.

And all because a young and somewhat wild Dr Harris had found it expedient – given the alternatives – to ship out on an East Indiaman, and a young Payne in years long past had run away from his indentures only to be press-ganged whilst sleeping under a hedge in the Wirral, near Little Neston, just as he was in sight of his intended Liverpudlian bolt-hole.

Sir Geoffrey got on very well with his brother-in-law, the current and seventh earl of Wednesfield; he and Lady Karen alike were perfectly accepting of that nobleman’s somewhat Herveyan, Beauchampish, Lygonish tendencies; but.... There was not, and there was clearly never going to be, a courtesy viscount Brewood in this generation, as heir to the current earl: an activist, alert to anything which smacked of discrimination and all afire for struggle and social justice, had once attempted to make a _cause c_ _é_ _l_ _è_ _bre_ of the fact that Wednesfield’s nick- or bye-name amongst his friends and all his acquaintance was, ‘Mincefield’, but that had come to naught when Tom Wednesfield had archly informed the activist that _he_ was himself the originator and populariser of that nickname.

This perturbed Sir Geoffrey: his brother-in-law’s failure to get an heir, not his camp sense of humour: only because it meant that Sir Geoffrey’s son was squarely in the sights for being, once his Uncle Thomas dropped off the twig, earl of Wednesfield: the eighth. The Paynes had accepted with some reluctance a baronetcy, generations before; they had rather disdained offers of a peerage title. And to see the baronetcy at last subsumed in the Wednesfield earldom was not a prospect Sir Geoffrey much cared to contemplate.

In fairness, neither did his son: who, like his uncle Tom Wednesfield, was unlikely to be producing an heir to succeed him in the title. Liam was not at all camp; he was in fact legitimately bisexual; but regardless of whether his slight, theoretical preference in that context were for women or for men, Sir Geoffrey was shrewdly aware that, whether Liam admitted it or not, he’d already given his heart away. And not to a woman.

That did not trouble Liam’s parents in the least, or give his sisters anything save grounds for teasing. Nevertheless, the family’s interests must be consulted and protected.

Sir Geoffrey’s marked lack of enthusiasm for peerage titles was hereditary. (A previous baronet had physically and personally thrown Maundy Gregory, that hawker of titles in Lloyd George’s ‘cash for honours’ schemes, out of his house hard enough to injure the bugger, and had only _not_ been prosecuted because his defence should have brought down the government and exposed Liberal corruption under the Welsh Wizard.) Dr James Harris and – as he became – Captain George William Payne had done very well for themselves in India, under the Company’s ensign. They had in fact come home nabobs, after having held the gorgeous East in fee: from the bazaars and quays of Bengal’s ports, to factors’ stations in Persia and Aden (they’d taken one look at Macau and HK and agreed the entrepôts could never last). But Harrises had been enthusiastic in using their wealth for adornment and advancement; whilst the more mercantile-minded Paynes....

Captain Payne had retired, in the end, to the leisured dignity of a gentleman of substance in his own, native county, without too evident pleasure in rubbing noses in the fact; and he had not been very good at retiring. He inculcated an ethos of hard work and determined charity into his children, and lived to see them begin the process which had resulted in Sir Geoffrey: marrying Manders, serving in the Commons (it had been that and that alone which had been reluctantly accepted, by the Old Captain’s grandson, as grounds for a baronetcy), acting as High Sheriffs and Deputy Lieutenants of the County, serving on commissions and appeals. They had been Radical Liberals after the Whigs declined, and staunch Manchester-School Free Traders; unlike the Manders, they had in the end, if reluctantly, gone over to the drier Tories once the Liberals ‘fell in sunder’. They had acquired – to go with their seat of Bishopsbury Park – a Georgian townhouse in Stafford, and a town place for the Season and for sittings of the House in London, in Queen Anne’s Gate, even as the Wednesfields – as the Harrises had become with unbecoming alacrity – had their Brewood House and their townhouse in Charles Street (trust the Harrises to go for Mayfair); yet they should in any case – as should the Wednesfields – have required a seat in London. For, however removed they became, socially, from tar and rigging, silver and opium and tea, the poles around which they and their fortunes revolved formed an axis connecting Wolverhampton and Mincing Lane (a fact which always caused Tom Wednesfield nowadays to snigger). The parks and home farms of Bishopsbury and Brewood were maintained, in the end, by Blackwall and the East India Docks, and by the great company house in Fenchurch Street and the factories and godowns of the Mysterious East. Harris Payne had chosen, unlike Swire and Jardine Matheson and Dent’s and David Sassoon & Co, to eschew becoming a _hong_ in the China trade; but their grip on the Subcontinent had been firm indeed.

And remained so, in its way. From Payne Docks to Harris House, Strand Road, Kolkata, it retained an Indian presence; and it had its fingers in many a pie. Or samosa. Or the cakes with your tea. Nationalisation and dispossession had not troubled them in Persia as it became the present Iran: they’d got out in good time to the Trucial States; they had managed to retain stakes in acceptably ‘national’ firms in India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Egypt, where – even as the great Canton _hongs_ had moved their operations to HK and Kowloon – they had seized upon opportunity in Alexandria. They were deeply involved in the Caribbean trade and in Bermuda; and Harris Payne Charteris, that canny partnership in private banking and wealth management headquartered in Hamilton and run mostly by the Scots bankers of Alexander Charteris’ Sons of the Strand, had weathered the financial crises with hardly a reef taken in in their sails.

Payne Harris Holdings Ltd has its heart, perhaps, in the City, and in Asia and the Caribbean; but its feet remain planted firmly in Wolvo and the Black Country. It didn’t want reinsurance through Payne Lloyd Austin to assure that.

Sir Geoffrey, and Lady Karen, that motherly assassin of the Harris side of the family, had seen to it themselves.

They had certainly inculcated these traditions in their son, Liam. Including that tradition of robust retribution against those who offended their dignity and honour, although (as Lady Karen, that motherly assassin, could attest) the forms of retribution nowadays were much more subtle.

* * *

The celebration had moved from Company House in Fenchurch Street to Queen Anne’s Gate: a select gathering enough, although not perhaps – the exigencies of business being what they are – quite select enough. Dear Jay – Deakin, now, bless her, thought Sir Geoffrey – was enlivening the party, yeast in the inert mass; it was remarkable that people – most people, as Sir Geoffrey well knew, being fools – thought her decorative-but-brainless, not internalising the fact that the much-married Jay had divested herself of young Austin long ago and at the same time taken and kept control of Austins Keyworth, that thrawn, thrifty manufacturing concern which had since the first days of rail and steam incarnated the best and worst qualities of the West Riding and its industrialism. Brass, lad, all brass....

No one ever failed to spot the brassiness and brashness of her son Louis, mind, although fools – meaning, most people – thought him as slack-twisted and casual as his father. That, reflected Sir Geoffrey, was folly: it disregarded the tuition of his successive stepfathers – damn it all, he’d even taken Mark’s surname to double-barrel with his father’s – and the training he’d had of Jay. Which was precisely what caused fools to disregard that sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued young man: for Jay had trained him in the arts of social camouflage. It was, after all, so much easier to ambush the unwary, that way.

For his part, Sir Geoffrey was chatting happily with Bobby Horan. Bobby was a rip: a man who regarded his chairmancy of one of the major Irish businesses (HGI Teo. it might now be listed as, but it’d always be Horan & Gallagher to Sir Geoffrey) as a means to his end: owning Derby City over here (Mel Morris had never seen it coming) and, much more, owning, and, as much as possible, personally running, the Kilbeggan Stud at home in County Westmeath. Bobby _looked_ like a butcher, the sort of man whom it was impossible to conceive as other than wearing a striped apron and a feather in his hat; and it was impossible to forget that Mide had once been overrun with roistering Vikings downing mead and roaring for more roast boar. The fact remained that no one in Ireland – whether in the Province or the Republic – sat down to breakfast or went down the shops without putting another euro, or in Ulster another pound, in Bobby’s pocket (with which he was inevitably to buy another racehorse). The rashers and the gammon (and the puddings black and white), the boxty and the potato farl, the butter and the cheese and the eggs and the beans and the tatties, and above all ‘t’e tay’, had come from HGI or had passed through its hands on the way to the shops even if those shops _weren’t_ owned by HGI, which in fact they quite likely were. And since Bobby had acquired, twenty years prior, the distillery at Mullingar, he’d been spinning money by means no one more admired than he. Yes, thought Sir Geoffrey, shrewd he might be and a solid man, with a keen eye for his business, but Bobby was a rip. And not a patch upon his son, that madcap merry madman of a Niall, who, like his father, cared mostly for fun and food, women and whiskey – indeed, Poitín, if available –, laughter and the horses and ‘t’e craic’....

Sir Geoffrey looked ’round. Ah. There _was_ Niall, cackling with glee as Louis looked affronted and poor young Harry looked confused.

And wasn’t _that_ a portent. Jay’s boy was of course merely being his usual, over-dramatic self (he had, reflected Sir Geoffrey, a good deal more than mere sexuality in common with Sir Geoffrey’s brother-in-law, did Louis); and Harry Styles.... Well. Another lad whose father had not proved up to the task – and whose mother very much had done. She, like Jay, had remarried, with consequent changes in surname; but Harry had kept Des’ name. And much of his fortune: which Anne had managed for him in his youth, as proxy and trustee, setting the board by the ears and dragging Styles Chester Bakeries plc into the modern era by the ear, to punch above its weight and take on even British Bakeries (RHM), Warburtons, and United Biscuits. And he, thought Sir Geoffrey, damned well ought to know: Payne Harris had its interests in Styles Chester quite as much as it did in HGI and Austins Keyworth.

And – wherefore this modest celebration – in Mirpuri Holdings, which included the transport (using Austins Keyworth technology) and manufacture and processing of foods (an interestingly tricky bit of negotiation with HGI Teo. there, granting that the one was _halal_ and the other very much based on ‘t’e little gentleman t’at pays t’e rent’, the Irish pig, but they’d made it work, and Bobby of all good Catholics was now supplying most of the Republic with its _halal_ ready-meals, shipped in from Bradford). Payne Harris, with its lengthy service East of Suez, had brokered these marriages, and, which they were celebrating this evening, a new partnership: between Styles Chester and Mirpuri Holdings, in cakes and pastry – indeed, in patisserie.

Payne Harris, after all, had its fingers in many a pie, samosa, and the cakes with your tea.

(Anne, bless her, had reacted with relief to Harry’s being at last old enough to take on duties with the board of Styles Chester. She herself had then started her own fashion label, Twisted Styles, in the secure knowledge that she had, in Harry and his sister Gemma, the perfect models; and was giving Vivienne Westwood a run for a hell of a lot of dosh, having captured the hipster market with ease.)

Harry’s look of adorable stupidity and regular, witless confusion was very model-like: and _very_ carefully, as Sir Geoffrey well knew, assumed. Louis Tomlinson-Austin was not the only lad here who resorted to camouflage and cunning.

Which reminded him: where was Liam? And his companion of the evening? Speaking of two young men whom Anne was forever begging to model with Haz and Gems and the Calder girl.... Astounding, really, reflected Sir Geoffrey, how times had changed. The idea that the son of a Minister of State – and grandson of a Foreign Secretary, God save us all – should be a male model, much though the Calder girl enjoyed the result.... (Harry had forgiven Louis for his panicky idiocy; Eleanor had excused it … eventually; Jay, however, even yet barracked her son from time to time for thinking he wanted to pretend to her, _her,_ his very own mother, that he was straight, and was not with Haz: not least because she considered it had put poor Eleanor into an impossible position. Sir Geoffrey considered with relief the openness and courage of his _much_ more sensible son.) With young Max as an example, let alone the occasional minor Royal connexions’ modelling, it was hardly surprising that Anne tried to enlist her children and their friends – Liam included – to model for her line of superior tat; or that even Niall, grinning like a madman, _had_ done, for the tweedy, sporty bits which, as Lady Karen had said, looked as if everyone at Barbour had simply got drunk one weekend and run wild through the cutting rooms with scissors.

Looking at his son, that bespoke-tailored rower and boxing Blue, Sir Geoffrey could understand Anne’s determination. Looking at the young man pressed close to Liam’s side, he could understand her absolute desperation to snaffle _him_ up as a model: and by the looks of him, the lad had already let her firm dress him, as for a postmodern Milanese catwalk. Midlands muscle in Anderson & Sheppard, matched with model-like smoulder in hipster couture: they made a striking two-fer, one must admit.

Well: at least Liam had good taste in partners of an evening. Or longer than an evening.

Sir Geoffrey caught his lady wife’s eye, as she chatted merrily – indeed, shared schoolgirl giggles – with Anne and with the wife of the Chairman of Mirpuri Holdings.

* * *

‘Ah. Young Liam.’

‘Mr Magee. Mr Jones.’

‘This is our PRO, Dan Woot- –’

‘Yes, we’ve been introduced. I trust he’s here to enjoy the evening, not to indulge the old journalist’s habit.’

Magee had had a few snifters, and was a model of beefy, boozy, rubicund jollity. ‘Good heavens, of course not, it’s well past working hours. Ah....’

‘Zayn? Mr Magee and Mr Jones. Publicists of various sorts: Simon Jones is _Not_ The Cricketer of That Name.’ Liam was coolly polite: although he knew that neither Magee nor Jones, nor their little Kiwi hanger-on, could appreciate what self-control it wanted to be even that to these three.

Before he could complete the introductions, Magee interrupted him. ‘Come, come, young Liam, you make us sound as if we’re the backroom boys who do the press releases.’ His jovial-seeming smile – like every smile Liam had ever seen on his face – did not reach his eyes. ‘When my firm and what had been Hackford Jones merged, we created the most influential brand management company in the UK. Why, we’ve even done work for Liam’s father, although the lad here seems not to remember it.’

Simon (Not The Cricketer) Jones, who had been eyeing Zayn in a fashion that made Liam wish to smash his face in, jumped in. ‘At the moment, we have some expansion hopes; and certainly wish to speak to the Mirpuri chairman about his new needs. All marques want management, and in-house simply doesn’t suffice.

‘Of course, we do take on some individual clients as well: musicians, models, other artists.... They are after all their own marques, just as if they were corporations, you know. If Styles and Tommo and the Horan boy were to model _professionally_ – I assume Old Mother Twist has already made a dead set at you, ah, Zayn, was it? You certainly dress for it – if they were to model professionally, we’d run over our own grans in a lorry to sign them.’

‘Charming,’ said Zayn, showing his teeth in what even Magee was neither drunk nor stupid enough to think a smile. ‘Li, babe, is that your dad motioning us over?’

* * *

‘Son. Zayn.’ Sir Geoffrey smiled. The man standing to his left smiled also, and chorused, with a wink, ‘ _Beta._ Liam.’

Liam and Zayn grinned back. Their fathers were, when they liked, better than most old music hall acts: almost Morecambe and Wise standard, really....

‘What’s happening, _baba_?’

‘Nothing whatever. We were simply rescuing our sons from those fools.’

‘They wish to meet the chairman of Mirpuri Holdings,’ said Liam, trying and failing not to smirk. ‘And pitch themselves to manage his marques.’

Yaser snorted a suppressed laugh. ‘Do they, though? Are these _Angrezi_ experts, then?’

Sir Geoffrey bit his lips so as not to laugh like a drain.

* * *

The next hour was, to those who knew what was afoot, simply mirth-making. (Liam and Zayn had of course cued Haz, Tommo, and Nialler in on it, which had carried only the risk of their being unable to keep straight faces as they joined the game: which of course they did join, Louis especially being delighted to make mischief.) It was like a game of tig, really; it took quite twenty minutes before someone unwittingly told Magee, Jones, and their faithful _chela_ Wootton (as Sir Geoffrey called him as, to Yaser), which of the others at the do was in fact the Mirpuri Holdings chairman; whereupon ensued a really quite funny round of the three mercenary idiots being blocked, interrupted, buttonholed, and otherwise kept from getting within ten feet of that merchant prince.

Shortly before they were finally allowed to succeed, Jones, falling back to regroup, found himself once more near to Zayn.

‘I meant that about the modelling. And if you sing at all, or act.... I was in a band, you know, when I was younger than I wager you are now: for about five minutes. I do have contacts.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. I do. Look, lad, I’m not a predator, or an enemy. I’m not going to tell you I can introduce you to SRK, f’r example, so as to get in your pants: which I don’t wish to do anyway. But. I know the score. I didn’t always have all the luxuries. Everyone sells themselves, a little –’

‘You think I’m a rent-boy?’

‘No, no; not what I’m saying.’

‘Good – _mate._ Because I fookin’ _hate_ Chelsea.’

Jones gave a conventional chuckle. ‘And that’s it. You’re clearly a Northern lad, here in London. And, yes, thanks to The Great and Terrible Anne, you can, just, appear at this sort of thing dressed … fashion forward, let’s say. I don’t call you a whore. But you must realise … Liam Payne’ll have to settle down some time. And if he doesn’t.... He’s not really the usual run of sugar-daddy. He, clearly, can get a partner, a _real_ partner, on his own, or could have done if he’d bothered to try; and he’s not much older than you must be –’

‘I’m half a year elder to him, actually.’

‘– Well, there you are; but he’s the heir apparent to a commercial empire, somehow made it through Oxford – a pass degree, I admit, but he was really only there to box and row and play rugger.... And there’ll come a time when your looks, astounding as they are, just don’t quite … well. You may as well use them now, in something that’ll make you better mun, which you can invest. Here: my number’s on the card. Think it over, lad, hey?’

* * *

As a rule, despite the polite conventions of this sort of gathering, Liam should have been by Zayn’s side; but Lady Karen, Trisha, and Anne, soon joined by Jay (Maura never came to these functions, although she had remained in the HGI board), had taken possession of him so that he could be within five steps of Yaser and Sir Geoffrey when Magee and Company finally tracked them down.

Which they did in short order as the hour wound down, Jones trailing along in the rear. Neither he nor Magee, nor Wootton (‘their basset,’ had quipped Louis; ‘but not royal,’ had added Harry), noted that Zayn was also drifting in that one direction; nor did they observe that Bobby was taking up a position nearby.

* * *

‘I know,’ said Magee, all heavy bonhomie, ‘the English convention is to say, “How do you do”, but we really  _are_ glad and pleased to meet you at last, Mr Malik.’

Yaser smiled: rather cuttingly. ‘Mr Jones: a word.’ He drew him aside. ‘That young, Desi-looking man you were speaking with....’

Jones carefully did not react. He’d have pimped out his own son, had he one, to get a contract. ‘Yes?’

‘What do you make of him?’

‘Charming, although of course out of place – socially, I mean. I know the feeling from my own youth: don’t think I don’t. But.... Well. I don’t see him with Liam for very long, if that’s what you mean?’

‘Don’t you? Ah. Thank you.’

 _I’ll warn the lad,_ thought Jones. _Best for both of us, really. I mean, it’s a cultural thing, I know that, but, surely he’d rather try the graft of entertaining than move on to being arm-candy for a bloke old enough to be his dad, and who asks about him – I don’t care how much he has in the bank – at a party, with his wife ten feet away...._

‘I’m sorry, I had to ask Mr Jones a quick question on another matter. Now, you were saying, Mr Magee?’

‘What other matter – oh. The, ah, walker Liam has for the evening. My apologies, Geoff, but: well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Brand management manages marques, and the people behind them; handles issues, smooths over troubles, and – shall we say, discreetly downplays potential scandals? So –’

‘Oh, really, Magee,’ snapped Sir Geoffrey, ‘are you suggesting my son brought a sort of up-market rent-boy or a sugar-baby to this function?’

Magee was nimble even now. ‘Of course not! I merely point out that sometimes even the most innocent things take on _appearances_ which the client may not even realise, but which a brand management firm is acute to: and can handle.’

‘And these are the sort of services you’d handle for Mirpuri Holdings?’

‘Yes, indeed, Mr Malik.’

‘And – why you? Why your firm in particular?’

‘Why, my dear sir, because we have a special eye and a special talent for it: as witness this little matter we’ve just discussed. We can see trouble coming from afar off: no one better.’

Liam had drifted over whilst Magee was answering his father. He, Sir Geoffrey, and Yaser exchanged glances. Sir Geoffrey noted the set of his son’s jaw, and of his shoulders, and the fashion in which his fist was rhythmically clenching and unclenching.

‘I think,’ said Sir Geoffrey, ‘we can be spared to my study for a chat in, say, half an hour? With Anne and Harry, and Jay, and Bobby: I think we want, Yaser, to go over everything which binds us, make a clean start with these brand management contracts, eh?’ Magee fought a smile of triumph. ‘We can mingle until then; half an hour. Liam! There you are. Can you get things ready for a brief chat in my study? You know what to do.’

* * *

‘Tell me, babe, you’re not going to get them into your dad’s study and kill them, like.’

Liam raised a thick eyebrow. ‘No.... There are other ways of defending your honour, love. And revenge is best served cold.’

Zayn’s responding look was full of lustful promise.

* * *

Half an hour after, Liam having rung up a number of people at home and overseas, the meeting convened in Sir Geoffrey’s study. ‘Hope you don’t mind if Liam sits in? Good. Now –’

Jay smiled prettily. ‘Actually, although you despair, really, of young men these days, I asked Louis and Niall to sit in as well, with Haz. After all, someday they’ll be doing this themselves.’

‘What a lovely idea from a lovely lady,’ said Magee, at his most unctuous.

‘It is,’ said Yaser, with a smile which could have cut diamond. ‘Perhaps my son ought to join us also. Liam? Would you – thank you.’

‘Well, this _is_ a red-letter occasion,’ said Magee, pouring on the oil. ‘I’d no idea your lad was here; it’ll be an honour to meet him.’

‘Oh, but you have done,’ said Liam from the doorway. ‘You didn’t let me finish the introductions, earlier.’ Magee, Jones, and Wootton slewed ’round to see the newcomer. Magee’s jaw dropped; and Jones, in sheer horror, broke wind terribly, to Niall’s sudden hilarity.

‘ _Baba._ ’

‘ _Beta,_ come in, you know everyone … worth knowing. Of course, having been walking out with Liam for three years, you certainly ought to do. My son Zayn, gentleme- – or, rather, you lot; for gentlemen you are not. The good news is that he is not – despite his attire: honestly, Anne, what are you _thinking?_ – he is not a rent-boy or Liam’s sugar-baby; perhaps you will think it better news that he is not an MD or on my board. The bad news is that he owns the Durbar Gallery in Bond Street: and shows there, he is the artist informally known as “Zap”.

‘Liam, I think the rest of this meeting falls to you?’

Liam squared those alarming shoulders and sat down: behind his father’s desk, Sir Geoffrey taking a nearby chair. ‘Thank you. All outstanding shares in Prudenz MJW have been acquired by overseas nominees and trusts where trading is going on at this hour. When ’Change opens tomorrow, it will be found that Haz, Tommo, Nialler, Zed, and I now own enough shares, with the holdings already owned by Payne Harris, to command a majority. You current Directors are hereby requested and required to call an Extraordinary General Meeting at the earliest possible date to elect a new slate of Directors, pursuant to the Companies Act 2006; the notice formally demanding this will be delivered in the morning. Or of course you can resign now rather than be sacked. The –’

Magee was very red, and his voice was clotted with rage. ‘You little – we’ll fight this, we’ll spend every –’

‘With what?’ Sir Geoffrey was coolly amused. ‘Your lines of credit are, I believe, with Charteris’ Sons. And fighting a majority call for an EGM to save your own jobs and positions is rather blatant self-dealing, isn’t it: a conflict of interest.’

‘And Chrisht but it’s reason to cancel a contract wit’ yiz, until and t’ere’s a new board,’ said Bobby, for once not smiling. 

* * *

Magee, Jones, and Wootton had slunk away from the halls of dazzling light, and from, had they but known it, the City and their industry: although Zayn had defended Jones, just a trifle, to Liam and to Yaser, and Jones’ punishment, he having more nearly meant well, was likely to be in the end less condign. The party went on, the parents and Niall and Haz-and-Tommo having gone back to circulating and knocking back the champers with special relish. Yaser and Sir Geoffrey, and Trisha and Lady Karen, had managed to keep perfectly straight faces (which was more than Anne, Jay, Bobby, Niall, Harry, and Louis had done) when Liam and Zayn had made their excuses.

As the car purred through the Westminster streets, towards Pimlico, Zayn unbuttoned a few more buttons on his shirt.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Liam, with a smile: ‘it’s not sexy, it merely reminds me of Haz.’

Zayn’s pout – and smoulder – reached epic proportions. ‘But I thought you liked me to be slutty … _Daddy._ ’

‘ _Zayn...._ Patience, love. Some dishes are best served cold.’

Zayn wasn’t having it. ‘Was I a good boy tonight, Daddy? Did you like it, my driving all those old buggers mad with desire of what they’ll never have, what no one but _you_ is ever going to have? Them thinking I was your sugar-baby or your rented slut? Knowing that I’m nobody’s slut but yours, that I’m slutty only for _you,_ Daddy, all for _you?_ Did you like it, Daddy?’ Zayn was, by now, no longer teasing, fully subsumed in his own fantasy and role-playing.

When Liam replied, after a dark and velvet moment, his voice, his tone, was as heavy-freighted as the dark and velvet look in his eyes. ‘We’re five minutes from your flat, baby boy. Daddy will let you know just how far you pleased him when we get there. Daddy may even let his baby boy play with his toys....’

Zayn gulped, and shuddered deliciously. The car drove on.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have been unavoidably away for a time (editors with deadlines and sudden anthology prospects will do that to a chap). Be so good as to accept this part-repayment for your patience; and know that nothing else of mine is ever abandoned, although it may often be left in suspense when duty calls.


End file.
